


Hydra

by cherie_morte



Series: trials-and-tentacles!Verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Breathplay, M/M, Mute Sam Winchester, Muteness, Season 8, Season 8 AR, Tentacle Dick, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles, Trials of Hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 15:23:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14138889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherie_morte/pseuds/cherie_morte
Summary: Sam completes his second trial—slaying a hydra—and is one step closer to shutting the gates of Hell. The hydra's venom has a curious side effect, however, and Dean wakes up one day to find six tentacles have sprouted from his brother's back. When Kevin sends them to an oracle to find out the last trial, they discover why.





	Hydra

**Author's Note:**

> Repost of my 2013 [tentaclebigbang](https://tentaclebigbang.livejournal.com/) originally found [here](https://infatuated-ink.livejournal.com/83744.html). The gorgeous art is by [blythechild](https://blythechild.livejournal.com/) and can be found [here](https://blythechild.livejournal.com/546515.html). More notes on LJ.

"Don't cut its heads off anymore," Dean yells at his brother. "You're just making it worse."

"Yes, thank you, Dean," Sam calls back, struggling to hold onto one of the hydra's thick necks as at least ten others turn on him. "I noticed that. But it's kind of hard not to cut them off when they're trying to eat you!"

He's so distracted responding to Dean that he nearly doesn't see the pointed spike of a tail as it tries to crash down on him. Thankfully, it knocks one of its own heads unconscious instead of Sam, but that's nothing but pure luck. And this kind of shit right here? This is why Dean was supposed to be the one up to his balls in these stupid trials. He's a backseat monster slayer. He doesn't know how to just stand here and watch as this thing tries to tear down his brother.

It's bad for his blood pressure, okay?

The hydra looks both exactly and nothing like Dean expected. It's a giant, hulking mass of dark purple and blue scales (they change color in the sunlight, which would be kind of cool if the thing weren't trying to swallow Sam), rising up out of the water and towering above them as tall as any cliff Dean's ever seen. He didn't even know hydras lived in water, except that this is where Kevin sent them, and it was pretty clear this was no ordinary beach as soon as they arrived. The rocks jutting up from the ocean are all worn down, not by erosion but from contact with the vile, bright purple poison the monster drools and spits and keeps trying to drown Sam in. Even the sand on the beach is singed in places—apparently the shit is so toxic it burns right through anything it touches.

The police in town had warned them when they tried asking questions about this beach. "That one's not for swimming. We tell everyone: stay away. Sometimes, tourists don't listen, and that's where your missing persons come from." Dean was expecting some local legend about the monster in the water, but the cop laughed at him and shook his head. "Nothing silly like that, just some toxic waste. But it'll burn right through your skin—no kidding. That beach is restricted and don’t go poking at it."

He's trying really hard not to think about that right now.

The hydra looks like a thousand giant snakes tangled together, with its big body so obscured by the squiggling mass of long necks, spiked tails, and tentacles that it's hardly there at all. It crawled up on the beach to try and get to Sam when he first started fighting for its attention, so Dean, standing on the sidelines with front row tickets and a direct order not to do _anything_ , has a pretty clear view of it.

The tentacles are the part that catch him off guard. All the drawings of hydras Dean's ever seen show them standing on four thick, clawed legs, but this thing just has what looks like hundreds of tentacles to swim and walk on. Maybe he shouldn't be so thrown by that—when do the things they hunt ever actually look like popular lore says they will?—but it's such a freakish sight watching this enormous creature trying to balance itself that Dean can't adjust. It sucks, too, because legs can be sliced at, worn down, forced to buckle, leaving the monster at the disadvantage of not being able to move, but the tentacles, like the heads and, Dean suspects, the tail as well, just grow back double when Sam slices through one with that dopey sword they'd doused in gasoline (of all the things to kill a hydra…). It looks so tiny, like a sewing needle, next to one of the hydra's massive heads, and there's tons of those. He doesn't know how the hell Sam is going to beat this thing with such a dinky weapon.

Well, okay, he does. Sam needs to stab the sword right into the monster's brain, which sounded a lot easier when Dean assumed that meant piercing any of the heads in the right place would be the end of it. No, no, apparently only one of the heads—the original one—actually has a brain inside it. The rest are just extensions of the body, like the tentacles, only with big, snapping jaws. Which explains why they're all so stupid. And Sam gets to try to figure out which one in particular is somehow special. He's already driven the knife's blade through about twenty of them to no avail.

Along with the seven or eight heads that the monster has taken out itself trying to swat at or bite Sam (Dean's not joking when he says the creature is an idiot), that leaves nearly thirty heads hanging limp and dead—which is good, it’s slowed the beast considerably by weighing it down, but there's no way Sam is going to have time to take out the rest of them before something goes wrong. The hydra has hundreds of heads. Sam's been fighting and fighting well for over an hour straight and he's hardly made a dent. Something is going to have to give before his brother is too worn out to keep fighting. Dean wants to close the gates of Hell and all, no doubt about it, but if it gets to the point where Sam can't fight, he's stepping in. Whether it ends the quest or not, he doesn't fucking care. He's stepping in.

It's the venom that has Dean the most concerned. He knows Sam's a capable hunter—maybe he's never fought anything this big, but he's wrestled some strong, smart sons of bitches, scarier than this giant, idiotic creature, and he's quick enough that the heads are confused by him, trying their best to keep up, but they keep biting at each other and missing Sam. Dean taught him well, what can he say? Sure, that many heads, each with long rows of teeth that seem as tall as Sam (and, to Dean's unending bitterness, Sam is not exactly what you'd call a short guy), trying to eat his brother is bad enough, but the venom is just the kind of shit that Winchester luck has to be wary of. Sam _would_ kill a fucking hydra only to be burnt up alive by a flying glob of stray drool.

Right now, Dean is watching the heads instead of his brother, trying to be useful because keeping his eyes on Sam is just making him freak out even worse. Sam's doing fine, doing great, Dean keeps reminding himself, but his odds are not very good at all, and it makes him angry all over again. This should be his task. Sam should be sitting where he is, useless and concerned in that Sam way of his but not on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. This wouldn't be torture for Sam like it is for Dean and if something is gonna go wrong—well, if something goes wrong, it's one thing if it's Dean who dies and something completely different if it's Sam.

Hell, if Sam could sit back and watch this attack like Dean is, take the time to be his nerdy, analytical self, he would probably already have figured out which head to kill, would have told Dean, and voila. Trial number two complete, bring on the next, Dean wouldn't be afraid.

Instead? Instead he's sitting here with his thumb up his ass, trying not to wonder what task number three is going to be if they get this much more dangerous in degrees, because fuck. He thought the hellhound thing was bad.

Sam swerves impressively, taking the chance to jump down and land on another head as the one charging at him chews straight through the head he'd been on before. Purple ooze—is that its blood, maybe?—rains down, just hardly missing Sam and burning the creature's back instead. The hydra rears its many heads, letting out a cry of pain, and Sam manages to take two more out of commission while it's distracted.

Dean takes a deep breath and tells himself it'll be alright. If there's one thing Sam knows how to do, it's fight, no matter the odds. Well, fight and have bad hair, but that's two things, and right now it's the fighting Dean wants to focus on. He needs to pay attention, try to be useful, try to find the one head in a million that matters when you stab it.

Then he spots something unusual. One of the heads is hanging back instead of throwing itself at Sam like a mindless killing machine. It doesn't look any smarter than the rest—in fact, it looks considerably dumber, with its neck tilted and its tongue dangling out, eyes fixed off in the distance instead of on the carnage going down on its own damn body. Dean would laugh at it, but he's got a suspicion scratching at him. He doesn't know if hydras can have plans, but if they can, this isn't a bad one. Keep the important head at a safe distance, all the while making it look so stupid no one would think it could possibly be the one with the brain inside.

The son of a bitch is _acting_.

"Get the stupid one!" Dean cries out.

"They're all stupid," Sam replies, slicing at one big eyeball.

"No, I mean the really stupid one. The one that looks checked out. To your left, but way back."

Sam takes only a second to look over his shoulder where Dean directed, blade sliding into the monster's nearest cranium as he does so. Even from the distance he's at, Dean can see Sam's eyebrows draw together once he sees the dopey head, and then they smooth out as it clicks, Sam letting out a breathless huff of a laugh.

Then he's sprinting the long length of the neck he was standing on as that head falls down, leaping onto another, and Dean's going to have a heart attack watching the crazy bastard running around like that, all impulse and no caution. Not that Dean would behave any differently in his place, but fuck, he really, really, really hates having to watch.

Sam climbs the spikes on necks, jumping from one to another like Tarzan swinging on vines. Dean has to cover his eyes. If Sam falls, it'll be right into a sharp tail, wide jaw, venomous puddle, or the thrashing waves of the sea around the monster, right into range for the tentacles to drag him under. If Sam falls, it's game over and if he doesn't, he's still got all those angry mouths to contend with.

But Dean can't look away forever and finally he chances a glance. Sam is crawling up the neck of the head Dean thinks will kill the hydra, and although that head hasn't snapped out of its playing dumb defense mechanism, its eyes are trying to focus on Sam, a much more intelligent, worried look in them than it had when Sam was ignoring it. Once he reaches the top, the hydra really starts getting pissed, all of its remaining heads turning on Sam, and Dean knows they have the right one. He stands, yelling…he doesn't even know what encouragement. Sam doesn't let the oncoming trouble distract him, but if this isn't the right head, it'll be the end of Sam and their stupid quest. Too many are coming now at once.

Dean can't hold back anymore. He looks around for something, anything, and bends over to pick up a big rock. It won't do anything to a monster this size—at least not enough to cause real damage, which Dean knows he's not allowed to do. But maybe he can distract it, buy Sam a few more moments.

He throws the rock as hard as he can, hitting one of the heads in the back. They all stop and hiss at him for a second, and that second is enough. Sam stabs down hard and the hydra lets out a cry that will probably wake the whole town, even though it's a few miles north of the beach. The hydra thrashes a few seconds longer, until finally it begins to collapse down toward the ground, Sam surfing it.

Dean jumps in the air, whooping in victory, before running from the cliff, arriving at the beach right on time to see Sam hop onto the sand. Alive. Looking exhausted but unharmed. Alive, he's alive, and Dean wants to wrap his arms around his brother and swing him in a circle, he's so fucking happy, but Sam's too big for that, and, anyway, Dean needs to play it cool.

"That took you long enough," he says, meeting Sam on the shore.

Sam drops the sword and falls to his knees, taking deep breaths, until finally he can manage a wheezy, "Fuck. You."

Dean grins, patting him on the shoulder. "Hey, man, you did it."

"Yeah," Sam says, his voice a little steadier now. He smiles up at Dean with the look on his face from back when he was just a kid and Dean used to be his hero. Dean's chest aches a little. "Thanks to you."

"Hey, what can I say? I'm a genius."

Sam snorts, struggling to his feet, and then he moves toward the hydra, walking up to one of the open mouths. He grabs at a tooth, trying to wiggle it free, and Dean launches forward, grabbing his hands to pull them away. "What the hell are you doing? That shit's still poisonous. If the tip cuts you—"

"I didn't tell you the whole task," Sam admits, letting Dean pull his hands away, but looking guilty as he does it.

"What do you mean, Sam?"

Sam swallows. "I didn't tell you what I had to do after I killed the hydra, because I knew you wouldn't let me even try if I did."

Dean's got a really bad feeling about this. "What else do you have to do?"

"Remember how after the first task I had to say those words to activate myself or whatever?"

Dean nods.

"Well," Sam's eyes dodge away from his, "after this one, I have to, uh. I have to stab myself in the heart with one of these teeth."

Dean stares at him flatly, unimpressed by the joke, but Sam doesn't start laughing. "What the hell do you mean you have to stab yourself in the heart with it?" he nearly yells. "There are three trials. The second one can't kill you."

"That's the idea," Sam answers uneasily. "According to Kevin, if I'm the right man for the job, if I have the strength of will and mind and the right intentions, then instead of killing me the tooth will fuse into my bones, the venom into my blood, and give me the strength of body I need to accomplish the final task."

Kevin. That little bastard. Just so happened to forget to mention that part to Dean. He's gonna kill that kid the next time he sees him. "No. No way. I'm not letting you do it."

"Dean," Sam says, exasperated already. "You know I have to. We can't turn back now."

"You're talking about stabbing yourself _in the heart_ —"

"I'm talking about closing the gates of Hell _forever_."

Dean goes right on, not really interested in the why. "With a razor sharp hydra tooth full of venom so strong it eats through rock."

"Kevin said that if I'm destined to do this, it won't be a—"

"You're strong enough! You don't need supernatural steroids to do whatever the next task is."

"They're going to give me something," Sam insists. "Some new kind of strength that I absolutely need to finish this thing."

Dean crosses his arms over his chest. "And what's that?"

Sam shrugs. "Look, I don't know. Kevin said the prophecy was kind of vague, but this is what I need to do."

"Yeah, that's great. Let's go poking you full of holes so that you can satisfy some vague prophecy. What if he misread it? What if the strength turns you into the Hulk? You don't know."

"Oh, just say it," Sam yells. "What if I'm not the right person? What if I'm too weak to see this through? That's what you're thinking, and I know it."

"Well, what if you're not the right person?"

Their shouts seem to echo across the beach for minutes, and Dean feels bad as soon as he sees the stung expression on Sam's face. His brother's eyes dim, and he looks angry, but his voice comes out in a low, measured tone. "Then it's too late to do anything about it. We have to try."

"Sam," Dean says in a placating tone. "I'm not trying to doubt you. I don't know of anyone strong enough to take a tooth like that to the heart and live to see the next day. Not to mention, you haven't exactly been at the top of your game, physically, ever since you finished the first trial."

Sam looks a little surprised to hear Dean say it, but then he gives a resigned shrug. He can't really have believed Dean wasn't noticing all the coughing, the bloody napkins, Sam's dodgy responses trying to cover it up. So he doesn't try to lie about it. "Maybe the strength this gives me will fix that. Maybe I'll be healthy again."

"Maybe you'll be dead. It's not worth it, Sammy."

"Not worth closing the gates of Hell?"

Dean doesn't back down. "Not if it's going to kill you."

"This is ridiculous," says Sam. "If you had gotten your way, this would be done right now. You wouldn't have stopped to worry about the consequences, you wouldn't have asked my permission, and I wouldn't have doubted you."

"It's different," Dean replies.

"Why is it different?" Sam asks. "Because you don't think your life matters as much as mine? Well, tough shit, Dean. It's my trial. It's my heart. I decide what to do here, and I'm doing it with or without your support."

He returns to the hydra's corpse and works at the tooth again. It's not nearly as big next to him now that the monster isn't a threat—maybe as big as his hand, which is still pretty big, especially for a tooth. Especially for a tooth Sam intends to stick into his goddamn heart.

Once Sam dislodges the sharp canine, he turns back to Dean, walking right up and placing the thing in Dean's hand. "I can do this alone if I have to. But it's not like I'm not scared. It's not going to be easy. I believe I can do it. Please, can't you believe in me, too?"

"I believe in you, man," Dean says, more to the tooth he's looking down at than to his brother. "But I can't just watch you do this."

Sam takes his hand and guides it to his chest, pressing the point against his heart. He looks terrified, but he catches Dean's eye and holds it, so brave Dean is still a little in awe of who his brother grew up to be.

"Help me, Dean," Sam pleads. "I really need you with me on this."

Sam presses lightly, urging Dean to make the final push. He wants Dean to be the one to drive this through, and Dean can't, he can't. But then he looks up and sees Sam's eyes braced shut as he prepares himself for whatever comes of this. Dean thinks of all the other impossible shit Sam's pulled off over the years. If Sam can be this strong, Dean can believe in him.

"It's gonna be okay, Sammy," he tells his brother, and Sam nods, eyes still shut.

Then Dean takes a deep breath and throws all his weight forward, like jumping into the deep end. Sam gasps at the first impact, but Dean watches in amazement as the tooth goes in and in, Sam's chest lighting up for only a moment as it sinks through the flesh and becomes a part of Sam. No blood. No cut. Sam opens his eyes wide when it's done, looking a little shocked, a little hazy, but not like he's in agonizing pain.

"Are you okay?" Dean asks.

Sam lifts his hand up to his chest, feeling around. Then he meets Dean's eyes, a disbelieving smile starting to spread across his face. "I…I feel great."

_______________________________________________________________

Sam feels so much better that he spends the entire next day locked up in his room at the bunker sulking. At least, that's what Dean assumes he's doing in there. He's triple-bolted the door (the first time Dean _isn't_ thrilled by how paranoid the Men of Letters were, because seriously, who needs that many locks on a bedroom door?) and won't come out for anything, not even food, not even to tell Dean what crawled up his ass after the great mood he'd been in after killing the hydra yesterday.

So, yeah, Dean assumes he's sulking, or crying, or writing emo poetry, because that seems in character for Sam, and Dean's been studying Sam since he was nothing but a fleshy bump in their mom's stomach. He considers himself something of an expert.

Problem is, 48 hours ago Sam was coughing up blood and trying to hide it from Dean, and 24 hours ago he seemed to be on the mend, was swearing up and down that he hadn't felt so good in years, and Dean believed him. But he's no idiot. Sam hasn't shown his face since they waddled their drunk asses to bed last night. Whatever's making him hide out has to be bad—has to be worse than the dying-hooker-coughing-up-blood routine, and Dean's getting anxious imagining all the horrible ways the second trial might have backfired.

The venom was supposed to be instant death, he keeps reminding himself, it would have burnt Sam up in seconds if it was gonna hurt him at all. But what if something went wrong? What if he drove a spike of poison right into his little brother's heart and Sam drops dead in there alone trying to pretend he's okay?

The only thing that's kept Dean from battering the door down has been the fact that Sam's room has been quiet—no coughing, no cries of horrible agony—all day. But he's just about reached his limit. He takes down the closest gun from the wall (a hunting rifle from the early 20th century), checks that it's loaded (it is, Dean fucking loves the Men of Letters), and sends a warning shot into the middle of Sam's door.

Silence for about half a minute until finally, "Dean, what the hell?"

Dean feels an instant surge of relief. Sam sounds annoyed and bitchy, like he would any day Dean fired a bullet into his door. Not in pain. Not dying. Just annoyed. "This is the last time I'm gonna ask you to quit jerking off and open the door before I shoot the damn thing down."

He hears a heavy sigh through the metal and takes a little heart from it, so he continues, "And don't think I'm kidding, because I'm not."

"Yeah, Dean." He hears one of the locks slide on the other side and feels both more and less tense as he realizes Sam's about to open up. "I could have guessed that from the fact that you just tried to kill my door."

It only opens a crack, but Sam peeks out through it. He looks fine, and Dean's worry subsides as his eyes scan down for signs of injury and he realizes Sam's not wearing a shirt and, fuck, Dean's eyes jump back up before he stares or at least before it becomes too obvious.

"What's up, man?" Dean asks.

Sam shrugs. "Nothing. I told you I'm fine. Can't I have a damn day to myself?"

"No," Dean says. Then, "I mean, yes. But not until you come out here and eat something and prove to me that you're not about to cough yourself to death or something equally embarrassing to our family name."

He tries to push the door open a little more; Sam holds it where it is. It doesn't even budge, which only makes Dean push harder. He's throwing his whole body on the door to no effect; Sam's only got one arm that can be holding it, but he doesn't even look like he's breaking a sweat.

"You got someone in there?" Dean asks, curious as to how Sam might have slipped out to pick someone up between now and the last time Dean saw him out and about.

"No," Sam replies, and then he scrubs a hand over his face.

He stops and stares at his left hand just as Dean's attention is catching on it, too. Sam isn't holding the door at all, at least not with his arms.

"Yes, I do," he adds quickly, but Dean just raises an eyebrow. "Okay," Sam says. "If I let you in, you have to promise to stay calm and not—"

Dean starts shoving at the door harder, throwing his whole body into it. Without warning, it opens, and Dean doesn't have time to slow himself before he finishes hurling his body through the open space where the door should be.

"Freak out," Sam finishes calmly, looking down at Dean.

From the floor, Sam almost looks like he's all wiggly, or maybe Dean hit his head and didn't realize it.

Then Sam reaches down, offering Dean a hand up and pulling him to his feet. As soon as he's upright, Dean sees more clearly what he thought he was imagining down on the ground. Sam is wiggling alright. He's got—Dean stops to count—six fucking bright purple tentacles protruding out of his back.

"Holy shit," he says. "What the—?"

Sam smiles awkwardly and shrugs, "You promised not to freak out."

"No I didn't!" Dean says. "I was too busy collapsing through the—what the hell is on your back, man?"

"What do they look like, genius?"

Dean blinks a couple of times and then can't help it, he doubles over in hysterical laughter. "You're a tentacle monster," he wheezes. "Dude, you're a fucking tentacle monster!"

Sam's expression is flat. "Thanks, Dean. For being so understanding."

Dean stands up straighter, trying to wipe the tears of laughter away. "Oh my god, oh my god, you're an octopus. Sam. Sammy—you've got eight arms and six of them are purple."

"Gee, I wonder why I didn't want to let you in earlier," Sam mumbles, but Dean sees that there's a tiny touch of a smile at the corner of his mouth. "Seriously, cut it out. It's not funny. I have no idea how I'm supposed to go outside like this."

That sobers Dean a little, and he does his damnedest to swallow the laughter, because Sam's got a hell of a point there. How are they supposed to go get burgers, let alone accomplish the third trial, when Sam looks like Cthulhu's way less intimidating baby brother?

"I guess we'll just have to cut them off," Dean says.

Sam swallows hard and nods, like he'd already figured that would be the next logical step but he's not particularly excited about it.

It only takes a few minutes to set up. Sam lies on his stomach with six thick tentacles squirming in the air above him.

Dean takes a step closer to his brother, observing the extra limbs with a little kid's fascination for all things creepy or crawly. The tentacles look like the ones that were on the hydra yesterday—which makes sense, if any of this can be said to make sense—only much smaller. They're a dark shade of purple that turns to a metallic blue when they catch the light, the suckers on the bottom of each two-by-two rows of dark teal. They meet Sam's skin with just the slightest pretense of blending in, slick purple skin turning to Sam's bronze seamlessly. Despite that, they look almost natural, almost like they belong, and Dean worries for a moment that he'll miss the line and cut Sam instead of the unwelcome appendages.

"Can you just do it already?" Sam grumbles into his arms. They moved into one of the spare rooms, Sam not wanting to ruin his bed with blood and tentacle goo and whatever else comes out. Sam has that poison in his veins now after all, and if it's going to burn right through the floor, it might as well not be anywhere they've gotten attached to.

"Alright," Dean says, pulling back and picking up the machete he'd brought with him. "But they're kind of cool." He pokes one gently with the tip of the blade. "Did they hurt to grow?"

"Nah, they didn't hurt. I just woke up this morning and there they were." Sam laughs, turning his face so half of it is looking up at Dean. "Our lives, huh?"

Dean gives his brother a weak smile. Sam looks like he's a little more nervous than he's trying to let on, and Dean can't help reaching out with his empty hand, stroking gently over the hair on the side of Sam's head. "Hey, that probably just means this won't hurt, either."

Sam nods, closing his eyes tight. "You should hurry up and do it. I can't really control them all that well, and they might try to fight back once you start."

With one quick swing, the tentacle just under Sam's left shoulder blade falls to the floor, wiggling desperately like a fish out of water. Sam lets out a scream and Dean stops before continuing. "You alright, Sammy?"

"It feels about as good as losing a limb usually does," he says through gritted teeth.

Dean swallows hard, wondering how many times Dean has lost a limb in Sam's memory and whether his brother meant his answer rhetorically or if he's really just in enough pain that he's forgotten that Dean doesn't remember any of those deaths. "Do you want me to keep going?"

"I can't really walk around with five tentacles on my back, now can I?" Sam snaps.

Dean decides not to hold the prissy tone against his brother and quickly hacks away at the tentacle on his right shoulder. He moves all the way down, deciding to lob off the bottommost tentacles before the ones in the center of Sam's back. It's not until he's halfway through the fourth, bottom left, that he sees the skin beneath the first wound he made starting to shift.

"Why are you stopping?" Sam asks. "There are still two more. I can take it, okay, just get them off me."

Dean watches in horror as two tentacles begin to grow like vines from the shoulder where there had only been one before. Sure enough, the right side begins to shift in the same way, and after a few more seconds, both of the bottom wounds are, too. "You can't feel that?"

"Feel what?" Sam asks. He begins to push up so he can look at Dean, but Dean pushes him back down, so Sam yells, "Feel what, Dean?"

"We, uh, we probably should have thought this out a little more," Dean answers.

Sam's hands reach back and he groans when he feels ten hydra-like limbs where there had only been six, face falling into the pillow like he's hoping it'll swallow him. "This can't be real."

But of course, it is.

_______________________________________________________________

"Alright," Dean says awkwardly, pacing in front of the table and looking at his brother. "This isn't the end of the world, right? We can figure this out."

"I have tentacles," Sam says in the kind of too-calm, too-collected voice that makes Dean think of the eye of a hurricane, or Dad just before the last drink would hit him. "Ten of them. Growing out of my back." Sam's voice begins to rise. "There are tentacles growing out of my back, Dean!"

"It could be worse," Dean reasons. "We really found this hideout just in time. At least we've got somewhere to store your freaky ass."

Sam's expression doesn't change even for a second. "Tentacles. Growing out. Of my back."

"I know, Sam, but—"

"But what? You want to sit there and tell me this is going to be okay? I can never go outside again. No one but you can ever see me again. I'm going to die down here alone and I can just give up on any kind of life that's—"

"Normal," Dean finishes for him, because he's heard it so many times and all he's ever wanted was to stop hearing it. "I get it."

Sam stops yelling with his mouth open, then looks at Dean for a long time before he shakes his head and looks away, completely defeated. "Bearable. I gave up on normal years ago. But after the trials were over, we…I was supposed to get out. I'll never get out."

Dean decides to let it go, as much as it hurts, because this is not new, this is what he knew he had to accept as the price for keeping Sam just a little while longer. Bringing up how much hearing Sam talk like that bothers him is just going piss Sam off more and, anyway, it doesn't matter. This isn't about Dean; this is about Sam and Sam being trapped and Dean shouldn't be just the tiniest bit happy to think that his brother will never be able to leave him again, though it probably wouldn't surprise anyone that he is.

He takes a deep breath. "I just mean that there's gotta be a workaround, okay? All we have to do is find it. The trials can't get completed if you can't go anywhere because you have a bunch of tentacles, and they weren't built to be impossible, just nearly. So there's a way, Sam. But you need to calm down so we can figure it out."

Sam blinks a few times, then gives a sulky nod, and Dean nearly laughs at the petulant look on his face, and the fact that Dean telling him to quit his bitching actually worked for the first time since Sam's tenth birthday.

After a few seconds of tense silence, Dean spreads his hands out on the table. "Okay. You said you can control them."

"Hardly," Sam replies. "And only when I'm focusing."

"Maybe it's like driving, you know? At first you have to think about everything, but after a while it's muscle memory."

"Yeah, okay," Sam replies curtly. "But controlling them doesn't change the fact that they're there."

Dean circles around the table and takes a seat, then turns to face Sam. "Unless you can retract them."

Sam gives Dean a look like Dean's the one sprouting limbs at random. "Retract them? That's your big solution? Where are they gonna go?"

"I don’t know," Dean says, waving his arms in the air. "Away."

Sam narrows his eyes, but he also makes a constipated face, and Dean knows he's trying to concentrate on pulling the extra limbs back into himself. It doesn’t work, but Dean does at least manage to get a quick picture on his phone.

As soon as he hears the shutter sound as the camera clicks, Sam opens his eyes, and, before Dean knows what's coming for him, he gets smacked on the side of the head by a tentacle.

"Ow!" Dean says. "What was that for?"

"You gave me that idiotic bullshit idea just to distract me so you can take a picture!"

"That wasn't why I—hey, wait a minute. Sam, look at your hand."

Sam looks down, then back up at Dean confused. "Yeah, it's your phone. I took it. So what?"

"You took it with your tentacle. You whacked me with your tentacle."

Sam's eyes brighten a little. "I didn't even have to think about it!"

"You were distracted so you kind of just did it. Like I said, muscle memory. Am I a genius or what?"

"You're a moron," Sam replies. He looks down at the phone, pressing a few buttons, which Dean fears might mean the hilarious picture of him trying to crap out his tentacles is getting erased, and then looks up at Dean with a bemused smile at the corner of his lips. "Sometimes you get lucky."

"I'm amazing," Dean says, grinning and kicking his feet up on the table.

Sam looks at his feet for a long minute as if he's trying to burn a hole into them until finally a tentacle swoops down and Dean gets what Sam was trying to accomplish. The appendage wraps around his ankle and yanks, and Dean finds himself dangling upside down. It's kind of hot, actually, how strong they are.

Fuck. If ever there was a train of thought that needed to be killed quickly, that was it.

Over the next three hours, they test the limits of Sam’s control. He’s not so good at first, but the more Dean distracts him (pisses him off), the more cool tricks they discover, until finally Sam has a handle on, well, the fact that he now has ten extra handles.

By evening, Sam has taught himself how to pull the tentacles into his back so that all they are is six big, bright purple scars. They look freaky, sure, but they fit under a shirt, and if Sam ever wants to get laid again, they won’t look inhuman. He still has trouble holding the position, so that every now and again little tails begin to wiggle and shift their way out, and when Dean tries holding a conversation, they manage to slither themselves to nearly the length of Sam’s arm before he realizes he’s lost control.

Still, it’s pretty obvious Sam won’t need to spend the next 40 years of his life hiding his wiggly ass in a bunker in the middle of Kansas, so, on the whole, Dean thinks the day has been a great success. He’s good to keep them both fed until they can be sure Sam can go outside without getting arrested for being a giant squid.

They get drunk again after dinner—because why the fuck not, right? It’s not like they can go outside—and start having some real fun. Because if Dean thought it was cool to have genuine pirate swords hanging on the walls in his new home, that coolness gets like eight hundred times more awesome when you’ve got a real kraken to swashbuckle with.

“Hey, what the fuck does swashbuckler even mean?” Dean asks, laughing when one of Sam’s tentacles wraps around his ankle and pulls him up into the air again. “I don’t think that’s a real word, Sammy. I think it’s a conspiracy. I think everyone’s just been lying to everyone else about it being a word so they don’t look stupid.”

He's starting to feel a little light headed. That could be the alcohol, or the fact that he's talking so fast, or the whole dangling-upside-down thing. It's about 50-50.

“But isn’t that all words are, anyway?” Sam asks, his eyes scrunching up like that’s a deep question as another tentacle pokes at Dean’s face. “Like, what does anything mean if we all don’t agree it means what it means?”

"You know, these things are kind of awesome," Dean observes as the tentacle that had been wiggling in his face tries to tickle his ribs and Dean swats at it. “They look like dicks, though.”

Sam shakes his head and then meets Dean’s eyes, looking like that’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. “What?”

“Your tentacles,” he says, reaching out and wrapping his hand around the end of one. “They’re kind of dick-shaped. I wonder if you could—”

Before Dean even knows what’s happening, he hits the ground ass first, Sam having dropped him.

“That’s so fucking gross, Dean,” Sam snaps. “You’re sick.”

Dean laughs, reaching out and gesturing for Sam to come back. “Aww, come on, Sammy. I was only joking,” he says, waggling his eyebrows. “Come play with me. I won’t try to grab your tentadicks unless you want me to.”

Sam throws him a middle finger over his shoulder, and Dean sits up against a wall, letting his head tip back as he laughs until it hits the plaster. It's not the first time he's left wondering how he managed to raise such a puritan.

_______________________________________________________________

They wait three days before they hear from Kevin again. They're out for dinner—their first time leaving the bunker since Sam's fun new appendages popped out—and Sam leaves to go to the bathroom, probably because after 45 minutes of perfectly controlling the tentacles he needs a few seconds to let them relax. It's Sam's phone that rings, but Dean doesn't even bother checking caller ID before he answers it. They hardly have boundaries, and in their line of work, whether a phone gets answered or not can mean the difference between life and death for the person on the other end of the line.

"Hello?"

"Sam? It's Kevin."

"Kevin," Dean says. "Oh, I've been meaning to talk to you."

"Can you put Sam on?"

Dean laughs. "Sam's not here at the moment, Kevin. Why don't you go ahead and give me the message?"

"I'll call back," says Kevin.

"I'll hide the damn phone if I have to," Dean says in an icy tone. "You think you pulled a fast one on me with that little thing you left off when you told me about the last trial, huh? You're telling _me_ whatever you called Sam to tell him about the last one."

"Pulled a fast one? Fuck you, Dean. You wouldn't have let him do it. I did what I needed to do to get the second trial done so I can get the hell off this boat and see my mom again."

He sees Sam coming back toward the table as Kevin talks and gestures to the phone. Sam nods, making a _Who is it?_ face without having to ask.

"Garth," Dean mouths, his hand over the receiver. He points to the door so Sam knows he's gonna take the call outside. Sam shrugs, returning to his salad.

Once the diner door is jingling behind him, Dean says, "He could have died."

"You know, it's funny you mention that, Dean. It reminds me of something. God, what does it remind me of…?" Kevin pauses for effect, then all but yells, "Oh, right! You tried to _stab_ my _mother_."

Apparently that's not a grudge Kevin plans to let go of. Dean can't say he'd act any differently in Kevin's shoes. He lets out a defeated sigh. "Look, will you just tell me what the third trial is?"

Kevin is quiet on the other end of the line. "I don't know what it is."

"Don't be smart with me," Dean says. "Just tell me. Look, I'm not gonna stand in the way, okay? I let him do the goddamn stupid thing with the hydra tooth—"

Kevin snickers. "How many tentacles?"

"Ten." Dean's mouth drops. "Wait, you knew about the tentacles?"

"Yeah, I lied to Sam, too." Kevin sounds so nonchalant about what a manipulative sonofabitch he's being that Dean almost wants to be proud of the kid, except for how it's him and Sam being dicked around. "You guys aren't really my favorite people in the world right now. And maybe you have your bullshit guilt complex and think nobody can ever get out of this life, but I'm done with it. I'm helping you guys shut Hell's gates, and then I'm going home and maybe to college, and you can get yourself killed chasing monsters for all I care, but I'm done."

"Fair enough," Dean says. "Sooner you tell me the third trial, the sooner it gets done."

"I really don't know what it is," Kevin replies. "That's what I was calling Sam to say."

"And I should believe you because?"

"Because you have no choice, genius." He can hear Kevin smiling when he adds, "And because I do know who can tell you."

_______________________________________________________________

"An oracle?" Sam repeats for the thousandth time. He looks forward, out at the dark road stretching in front of them. It's gonna stretch on for days before they reach Delphi, Indiana. "At Delphi? Are you sure he wasn't messing with you?"

"That's what he said, Sammy. He said it's an unbroken line from the old Greek temple, passed down from generation to generation. Same temple traditions as the good ol' days, transplanted here and a town built around it with the same name as where the oracle came from."

"But that doesn't make any sense," Sam says. He probably doesn't know there are three tentacles holding his hair out in different directions, and Dean's not about to tell him. But he does have to look away and pretend to cough to cover the laugh. "What does a Greek oracle have to do with closing the gates of Hell?"

"The same thing that hydras and hellhounds are doing in Greek myths, apparently. Kevin said the prophecy was supposed to be read and taken care of a long time ago, so the seeds for defeating the trials were planted in the civilizations that sprung up after they were invented. But I guess humans suck more than God thought, because nobody's ever pulled them off."

"Oh, great, I feel real confident now." Sam tries to slump back in his seat, and that's when he realizes there's a halo of slippery arms poking around his head. "Dammit!" he says, swatting at them, then forcing himself to calm and get them under control the way he and Dean have been working on. "I hate these stupid things."

Dean finally lets out all the laughter he's been holding back for the last 100 miles. "You should have seen the bunny ears they gave you back around St. Louis."

Sam huffs. "Can you not encourage them?"

"I thought you could control them, Sammy," Dean teases.

"I can!" He crosses his arms over his chest. "Just…sometimes they get ideas. And some of the ideas are easier to stomp out than others, especially when I'm not really paying attention."

"Oh yeah, like what?"

Sam's eyes hover somewhere in the vicinity of Dean's mouth for a long beat and then he looks out his window. "Just don't encourage them, okay?"

_______________________________________________________________

The oracle's not much of a talker. Dean hangs back when they knock at the door, waiting for Sam to explain to her who they are and how they know that what looks like a simple yellow house is really a temple.

She tries to shut the door on him as soon as he tells her their names, but Sam persists until finally she opens up wider, welcoming Sam in. Dean immediately moves to come in after him, but she holds up a hand.

"No," Sam says. "It's okay. He's—he's with me."

She shakes her head, and Dean's stomach is beginning to sink, but fortunately Sam insists.

"I vouch for him," Sam says, in a strangely formal tone. "You can see into my heart. I have the blood of the hydra within me, and he is my blood."

The oracle doesn't look thrilled, but finally she moves aside, allowing Dean to scurry in after Sam. Once he gets a chance to look around, it's evident why she was so hesitant to let them in. The inside is unbelievable—it seems bigger than the house that contains it, with marble walls and floors and columns stretching up and up like stone trees.

The room is open and airy, and, Dean realizes, the sun is shining in. It's a courtyard with a fountain and what looks like an altar sitting directly in the center. Dean doesn't let his eyes linger on the altar, trying not to wonder if his brother is going to have to suffer on it in order to finish off these trials.

"This is really cool and all," Dean says looking around, then giving the oracle an unimpressed look. "But why don't you tell us what Sam here needs to do so we can—?"

"Dean," Sam snaps, turning to look at him. "She can't speak to you."

The woman continues to walk forward, stopping at last by the fountain and turning to face them. She's hot, maybe late twenties, with dark brown skin and long black hair tumbling down past the dark red leather sash tied around her hips, securing the white robe she's wearing in place. But Dean feels his blood turn to ice when she looks up, her eyes meeting his own. They're colorless—not the kind of pale blue that is almost clear, but actually entirely without color. There's a thin black outline around her iris and a black pupil in the middle, but the space between looks like a kid missed a spot in his coloring book.

"She gave up her sight and her voice to see and hear the words of her gods."

Dean shuffles uncomfortably under the scrutiny of her not-gaze. "Well, she's creeping me out."

"She can still hear you, Dean."

Dean rolls his eyes, not really caring. "How are we supposed to find out what your next task is if she can't talk, smarty pants?"

"I can hear her," Sam says, turning to look at the woman, a weirdly warm smile touching his lips. "She has chosen to share her wisdom with me."

The woman waves her hand dismissively, then reaches out, the seemingly hundreds of bracelets on her arms jingling as she moves. Sam steps forward, taking both of her hands, and she looks up at him.

Sam is quiet for a long time as he looks at her, but his expression begins to dim pretty quickly, until finally he pulls his hands away and steps back. "Is that everything?"

She nods.

Sam shakes his head. "Dean, we're leaving."

"Leaving to do what?" Dean asks. "What's the trial?"

"Doesn't matter. I'm not doing it," Sam says. "We're just plain leaving."

Sam stomps out of the house without another word, and Dean just casts a quick glance back at the oracle before he follows. He kinds of hates that she's looking after Sam with such a sad expression.

He finds Sam around the corner of the house, sitting on a bench in the small herb garden tucked away at the edge of the temple's yard. Sam is sitting on the bench hunched over, staring down at his hands, and Dean moves cautiously, not taking the space next to Sam until he's sure his brother knows he's there.

"What, uh, what is it?"

Sam doesn't answer, just keeps his eyes on his hands. "I'm not doing it."

"Bet you wish you'd let me kill that hellhound now, huh?"

Sam's head snaps up, a fiery look in his eyes. "No. No, I don't. You wouldn't do this, either. No one should."

"Not even to close the gates of Hell forever?" Dean asks incredulously. He reaches out, stroking his hand on Sam's back. "Can't be that bad."

"It's asking too much," Sam says in a weak voice. "I was willing to give everything, but this is asking _too much_."

"It's okay to be scared, Sammy," Dean tells him. "But I bet you can do it and get out alive—"

"I'm not scared for me," Sam snaps. "It's not about whether I think I can do it. I won't. I won't. I don't want to and I won't."

He leans forward, moving a few stray hairs out of Sam's face so he can get his brother to look up at him. "You can't decide you don't want to. This is too big to give up on that easy."

"Easy," Sam says with a bitter laugh. "Mom. Jess. Dad. Bobby. Jo and Ellen. I have so much blood on my hands, Dean. I've watched everyone I love die and blamed myself for most of it."

"I'm still here," Dean says, which only seems to upset Sam more. "I'm here to help you get it done."

"No," Sam answers, pushing Dean away and then running his hands through his hair in frustration. "Don't you touch me. Don't you tell me you've been here for me—you're the one I had to watch die the most. I've seen you die so many times—it's been my fault so many times."

"I'm here now," Dean reminds him. "I don't see what this has to do—"

"The sacrifice isn't me, Dean," Sam interrupts. "I was ready for it to be me. I was okay with that, to accomplish something this big. As much as I want to live, it's not like I didn't think there was a chance I might not."

And now Dean's just annoyed. He had a perfectly good solution to this problem before Sam decided to steal these trials from him. "What’s the sacrifice?"

Sam looks up at Dean for a long time, his gaze intense, but he doesn't say anything. Finally he looks away. "The tentacles aren't for fighting. I thought that would be it, right? Extra strength against some really big monster—all the other trials have been monsters. Slaying monsters I can do. This I can't."

"So…what are they for, then?"

Sam's cheeks begin to burn red. "Sex."

"See?" Dean asks, throwing his arms up in the air. "I told you they look like dicks!"

Sam doesn't seem all that amused, so Dean sobers himself. "Okay, what, so you have to fuck someone with some tentacles. Man, Sam, that's not even that bad. I'm sure some freaky chick out there is into that. She's been waiting her whole life for a tentacle monster like you to sweep her off—"

"They're poisonous, Dean, did you forget that? The venom they're gonna secrete when I—when we—" Sam blushes harder and ducks his head, and Dean silently laughs again, the word prude singing out in his mind as it so often does when Sam's acting like they haven't been jerking off in the same room since they were kids. "When the trial is done. It's probably going to kill—um. The other person."

Dean frowns, finally seeing the problem. "Okay. Yeah, I…I get it, Sam. That sucks. But, in perspective, I mean, so many people die every day while demons are roaming the Earth, and we let most of them out." Dean pauses and licks his lips. "It…it might be…I hate to say it, you know I do. But does it matter who? We could find a bad sonofabitch, or…"

Dean stops before volunteering himself. Dying while Sam fucks him is probably the best possible way to go, but if Sam knew he thought that, if Sam knew he'd be okay with it, not only because it's better than letting someone else die but because _he wants it_ , how could he even stand to look at Dean?

"It has to be a part of me. The part I hold dearest. The sacrifice is mine, Dean. I have to do this to my—to my dream girl. To someone I love. And they have to let me, knowing full well what the danger is." He looks down at his hands again, a defeated slouch, and says quietly, "I'm sorry, Dean. I just can't do it. Not after Jess and—and all the times I've already lost—"

"Do you know who it is?" Dean asks, not able to keep the jealous edge completely out of his voice. Who does Sam love more than a chance to close off Hell? A deep, ugly part of him hates her already for meaning that much to his brother; it wants her dead and good riddance. Then there will be no one left to steal Sam away. Dean pushes those thoughts down, down, and as far away into himself as he can manage and clears his throat. "Do you know who we would need to find?"

Sam raises his head, giving Dean a look that's a healthy mix of confused and angry. "Are you seriously asking me that question?"

"I'm sorry, Sam," Dean says. "I am. But we're talking every demon ever back in Hell. We're talking peace on Earth. You can't not do it. I'm so sorry, Sam, but you gotta."

"Fuck you, Dean." Sam sighs and passes a hand over his face. "No, I don't know. I mean, I have some idea. She’ll tell me. If I go in and vow to pursue it, she'll show me who I need. But I won't do it."

"C'mon, Sammy. I'm sure whoever she is will understand once you explain. I mean, it's a just cause to die for."

Sam laughs. "That's easy for you to say."

"It's not, actually," Dean answers. "I really wish—"

Dean stops. He's said it so many times _I wish I was the one doing the tasks instead of you_ , but he can't say it this time. He knows who it would be if he were the one in Sam's shoes. He'd have to kill his brother. He'd have to force Sam to give Dean what Dean's always wanted, and Sam would probably live just long enough to hate him for it.

"I wish it were something else, but we can't give up now."

Sam sits quietly for a long time, and Dean doesn't realize he's crying until his brother's shoulders start to shake. "Don't make me do it," he begs. "Dean, anything but this. Not again."

"I'm sorry, Sam. I am. So, so sorry."

Sam stands up suddenly, turning on Dean angrily. "If I go in there, I have to take a vow of silence. The next words I say will have to be the words that end the trial. I'll have to say them over the body of my sacrifice while—while they stare up at me and die."

"We can try to find another way," Dean finally offers. It's bullshit, but it's the only out he can offer. He hates offering it. He hates that Sam's selfish enough—that he's selfish enough on Sam's behalf—that they're about to give up on this. Go back to that boat and look Kevin in the eye and tell him he'll never see his mom again because Sam wouldn't even try. All the victims of demonic attacks they ever meet again—Dean is going to have to try to say the right things, try to help, knowing full well he and Sam decided in this moment that their family members were worth letting down.

But Sam's right. He's lost too much and it's not fair. It's too much to ask, and Sam's already sacrificed enough. Whoever this person is, Sam deserves to find them, settle down, and live a long happy life without Dean or hunting dragging him down. They can’t find the one person that could make Sam happy just to kill her.

"It's okay," he tells Sam again, standing up and putting a supportive hand on Sam's shoulder. "We'll figure something else out."

"There is nothing else," Sam says, nearly in a whisper. He turns to look at Dean and his face breaks, like he's about to start crying again any moment. "I don't have a choice, do I?"

Dean looks down at his feet. "No, Sammy. You don't have a choice."

"You have to stay out here this time." Sam's voice is cooler now, like he's trying too hard to control it and anger is the only way he knows to do it. "She's going to tell me the name, and you can't hear her voice."

"Good luck, Sam." He doesn't look up again until Sam's already tracked his way out of the garden and back up the front steps. Dean watches him knock, watches the oracle open the door with a surprised expression and then nod solemnly. Sam goes in, and Dean waits half an hour before his brother comes out again, his expression looking ten years older than it did and his lips shut in a tight line.

_______________________________________________________________

Dean lets Sam have the first few days after taking his vow to reflect and be upset and doesn't bother him too much. They head back to the bunker, the journey passing with an uncanny silence undercutting the music. Usually Sam would be complaining, and Dean finds himself skipping the songs Sam really hates on instinct, as if he can hear the bitching even while Sam is staring ahead at the road with a dead expression. Sam's not saying anything, and, if he were, his mind wouldn't be in the here and now enough to complain about AC/DC. Maybe that's why Dean is so eager to pretend he hears the complaints and that Sam doesn't have worse things to worry about.

He doesn't even try to broach the obvious subject until they're back in their bunker, a couple of good homemade burgers in their stomachs, a few beers. They're watching a CSI marathon on the incredibly old school television in what must have been the Men of Letters' rec room. They're both lying on opposite ends of the same couch, feet tangled.

It's not until he looks over that it hits him; Sam's got five tentacles moving lazily in the air like stocks of wheat just waiting to be plucked. What's weird is less the tentacles and more the fact that they've been here for hours and Dean's only just realized it's not a normal thing to look over at one's brother and see, tentacles. Already, they feel like just another part of Sam as far as he's concerned.

Sam blinks hazily; Dean knows he's been dozing. Get a few beers in him, he sleeps like a baby. He looks okay, too. Kind of happy, or at least happy in the sorry way Winchesters can ever be. He doesn't look, for the first time in nearly a week, like he's got the weight of the world sitting on top of him and he just wants it to crush him already.

Dean hates that he's about to ruin it, but, well. He'd like to get this over with and put these trials in the past as soon as possible, and he knows it's gonna have to be him who pushes Sam to start looking for whoever it is he needs. Sam will put it off forever if he gets the chance.

"So who is it?" Dean asks, gathering his beer bottles from the floor. "Jennifer Lopez?"

Sam laughs, then shakes his head, and looks away sadly. He shrugs.

"C'mon, Sammy. I know you know." Dean moves closer. "The sooner we find them, the sooner we know for sure what happens. And maybe she'll survive. You did say it was only probable that they wouldn't, and just look at you, you took the stuff and a tooth in your heart and all that came out of it was some extra limbs."

Sam makes a pleading face. _I don't want to talk about it._

As if Dean wants to talk about it. "You can't avoid it forever. C'mon. Gimme a hint. Is it Ben Affleck? I won't judge you. I'm more of a Matt Damon guy myself, but, hey, different strokes."

Sam rolls his eyes. He stands up, making for the door.

"I know it's Amelia," Dean finally blurts out. Sam freezes in the doorway but doesn't turn to look at Dean. He knows it sounds like a threat said like that, all blunt and accusatory, but Dean would give anything to spare Sam having to go through this. "I know it's her, Sam. And you can put this off all you want, but you said it yourself. There's no real choice. You've got to go to her."

Sam slowly faces Dean. He walks back into the room, takes Dean's hand, and shakes his head. For a moment, Dean thinks Sam is refusing to do it, even after taking the vow and keeping his silence all these days. But then Sam presses his hand and looks into his eye, begging Dean to understand what he's saying. _It's not her._

"You're lying to keep her safe," Dean replies. "I don't blame you."

Sam shakes his head. _Not her._

"Then who?"

Sam lets out an ugly laugh and tries to pull away, but Dean doesn't relinquish his grip. "Then who, Sam?"

Sam shoves him, Dean stumbling back until his legs hit the couch and he nearly trips. One of Sam's tentacles plunges down and catches him by the wrist, holding him up. Dean laughs at how absurd it is, but then he starts to feel…

Warm. No, hot. A strong, nice heat that's building in his wrist, where the tentacle is wrapped, the suckers beginning to stick to Dean's skin almost like little mouths. The heat becomes a tingling sensation, concentrated from the suction cups but moving down through and around his body like the tentacle is drugging him or something. Dean feels…good. Real good. And horny. So fucking turned on and, fuck, obviously turned on right in front of his brother. Because of his brother. Because of his brother's _tentacle_. These things better not be able to read minds.

He looks up at Sam, horrified by the thought that his brother has noticed his very obvious reaction, but Sam's attention isn't on him. It's fixed on the tentacle around Dean's wrist, focused on letting go and clearly beginning to panic as the appendage makes no sign that it's planning to do so. Instead it's wrapping tighter around Dean, pulling him in. He feels languid and like he's about to throw himself on Sam and kiss his brother any second.

Then Sam does the last thing Dean expects—he pulls a sword out of a display case and slices the tentacle off before Dean even sees the blade coming. He gives a short cry of pain, but seems relieved as he watches the purple muscle fall away from Dean and hit the floor. Before long, the end of the tentacle begins to grow back double, so it's one long limb with a two way fork at the tip.

For his part, Dean is still flushed and turned on and ashamed, but the intoxicating rush stops as soon as the tentacle is cut away from Sam. He takes his wrist in his other hand, rubbing it. There's a long line all the way around of little red hickeys in neat rows, and Dean laughs, holding it out for Sam to see. "Hey, look, Sammy. These are gonna be pretty hard to explain at the office, huh?"

Sam looks at them, then at Dean, and then he flees the room. Dean decides to wait a few more days before pursuing this again.

_______________________________________________________________

So…he gives Sam another week. Frankly, Dean thinks he's being pretty fucking generous. And he gets it, he does, but Sam is being deliberately uncooperative and grumpy and, basically, Dean's sick of it. Maybe Sam won't ever forgive him for this once it's over, but by then the gates of Hell will be closed and…probably it's for the best if Sam never wants to speak to him again, anyway. Dean isn't being sensitive, and it's not because he wants the demons locked up. It's because he wants this trial to go away so he can stop having a reminder that there's someone out there Sam loves more than him hanging over his head at all times.

He leads Sam out to the car with two packed duffels, throwing them into the Impala's trunk and slamming it too hard. Sam is looking at him with the same puzzled expression he's been wearing since Dean told him to pack for the road this morning, but he gets in when Dean points to shotgun without complaining. Mostly because he can't complain. Vow of silence, it's brilliant. Dean wishes he'd thought of that when Sam was 12.

 _Where are we going?_ Sam asks, just by lifting an eyebrow and moving his head the right way.

It's hitting Dean lately just how little in conversation they're losing from the fact that they can't really talk to each other. He remembers Sam's drunken observation, back before this whole thing started, about how language doesn't really mean anything. Dean's a little smug that he and Sam have a silent language stored up from a lifetime of living in each other's pockets without ever even knowing they were creating it. Take that, mysterious girl Sam's letting demons rule the world to keep safe.

"First, we're going to see Kevin," Dean says, putting the key in the ignition and starting the car. "So you can tell him why he hasn’t seen his mom in months. Or so I can tell him. You know. Whatever. If that doesn't work, I'm gonna track down Missouri. And she's gonna read your damn mind and tell me who we're looking for. And if your psychic thing is stronger than hers, no worries. Then we're gonna go to Texas and I'm gonna meet Amelia. Because whether you're willing to tell me it's her or not, I don't have any better leads. Or, Sam, we could save ourselves all that time if you just give me a sign for where I should take us so that we can get this over with."

Sam stares at him throughout this speech, nostrils flaring wildly as he takes in everything Dean says, but he doesn't look as pissed as Dean is expecting by the end of it. Instead he lifts his arms, and begins to make rolling motions. Before long, two tentacles join his arms, the purple hitting the sun as a blue crest whenever it wiggles upward. It kind of looks like…

"Waves?" Dean asks.

Sam nods.

"You want me to take you swimming?"

Again, now more excitedly, Sam nods.

"What…why the beach?"

Sam gesticulates in a way that plainly says _how do you expect me to explain when I can’t talk, you dumb asshole, will you please just go with it?_

"Yeah, okay," Dean replies, thinking over where the nearest beach would be. They're not exactly close to any in Kansas. "Does it matter what beach?"

Sam lifts his fingers to his mouth, drawing attention to his lips as he licks them. Like he's thirsty.

"Water because you're thirsty?" Dean tries.

Sam shakes his head, repeating the motion more slowly. Then he puts his hands out, like he's asking…

"What makes you thirsty?"

Sam nods, then begins to mime shaking something onto his palm.

"Salt?" Dean guesses. "It doesn't matter as long as there's salt water?"

Sam smiles like he used to when he came home from school with yet another A+ on a test.

Dean slaps his brother’s thigh. "We're going to be unstoppable at charades after this."

Even Sam's laugh is silent, but his head falls back, and he looks, well, like he finally accepted what he's going to have to do and is willing to work with Dean a little.

They get a motel in Oklahoma somewhere near the border with Texas. Dean's still not sure what the hell Sam's trying to accomplish with this beach thing, but he's showing Dean websites for hotels on the waterfront. They don't look like the kind of places Winchesters generally frequent, and the prices per night nearly make Dean cringe, but Sam seems pretty damn adamant. Maybe he wants to show his lady friend a classy time before…well, before his tentacle dicks probably kill her. Or maybe she works at one of them. Dean's trying not to think about it until he really has to.

Neither of them has much energy after a long day of driving to do much more than order Chinese to their motel and crash.

In the middle of the night, Dean wakes up to the sound of Sam panting. He sits up, about to tell his brother to quiet down if he's gonna jerk off, but what he sees kind of stops him dead in his fucking tracks. 

Sam's not masturbating. Or, well, he is, but not on purpose. Dean has to stifle a groan when he sees his brother in that bed just a few feet away from him. One of the tentacles has yanked down the sheets and is holding the elastic on Sam's boxers so that another can slip in. Dean can't see his brother's cock—fuck, he feels a flush of shame because he _wants to_ and it was his first thought, the place his eyes immediately wandered when he woke up and heard those sounds Sam's making.

The tentacle that's gotten past Sam's underwear is wrapping around Sam's dick from the shaft up to the tip like a boa constrictor, but it's pulsating around him. Sam's hips are hitching up, rolling roughly into the friction his own damn tentacle is providing like he's fucking into a cunt, and Dean reaches down and cups his balls imagining the slick heat of those, how the suckers must add so much pleasure. Just the memory of how they felt on his skin has Dean's dick completely hard before Dean even starts to jerk it.

Sam's cries get louder, and Dean worries he'll start saying something by accident, break the vow of silence and throw all their hard work away just because of some wet dream. Maybe the tentacles have the same worry—maybe they really do get ideas of their own. One of the tentacles from Sam's top left shoulder slides across Sam's jaw, urging his mouth open, and then it slides in and in and Sam's mouth is stretched around his own fleshy limb.

Dean bites down on a knuckle, but he watches with concern, ready to spring to Sam's rescue if the tentacle starts to gag him, or if the sensation wakes Sam up and he panics. But the effect is just the opposite—Sam _calms_ with his mouth shoved full, like a baby with a pacifier.

How goddamn sick is it that that's the filthiest, hottest thought Dean's ever had, that he wants to try slipping his dick in there and see if Sam would take it, if his baby brother would sleep nice and sound with Dean’s cock in his mouth.

That's it. Dean doesn't even get to fully imagine the way Sam's eyes would slide open sleepily and he would just go with it, take Dean all the way to the back of his throat, before Dean comes into his fist, panting almost as loud as Sam is as he makes his own last desperate thrusts into the cunt-like vice around him.

Dean swallows hard and watches as Sam finishes, as his rough breathing begins to even out. Then he turns onto his side to try and fall asleep again and catches a metallic glint in the light between his bed and Sam's. Purple flesh reflecting the glow from the streetlamp in the parking lot outside their window.

It's a tentacle reaching out to him like an invitation. Like an invitation to what just happened. Dean mimics the gesture, holding one arm out toward the long extension of his brother, and sees the fading ring of now purple marks on his wrist from when one of them grabbed him, from how quickly the lust he just witnessed spread from those suckers into Dean's blood.

Jesus Christ, he feels so stupid. So incredibly stupid. It grabbed out for him. It wanted him, just like this one does. The only reason Dean hasn't touched them enough to drown in those sensations is because Sam's been keeping his distance so carefully, making sure none of them grab Dean, chopping off his own limbs if necessary.

He nearly lets out a sob as he realizes—it's so fucking obvious. This is what Sam's been trying so hard not to tell him.

Dean's going to die a very happy man.

_______________________________________________________________

He waits until they reach the ocean the next day to bring it up. Sam's not acting any different than he has been, probably because he has no idea he got fucked by his own tentacles last night while his brother watched. That makes Dean wonder if what he witnessed last night has happened before, if every night they've spent in the bunker since Sam's new body parts showed up Sam's been fucking himself unconscious.

Wow, getting hard in the middle of a crowded restaurant while eating dinner with his brother was so not on the list of things he was planning to do today.

Sam raises an eyebrow at him as he begins to squirm in his chair, and Dean decides to hell with it. He might as well just say it. "It's me, isn't it? The person we've been looking for. It's been me this whole time."

Sam looks at his salad, then gives the tiniest shrug, just enough to move his fork up and down about a quarter of an inch. He goes back to eating his salad, and he doesn't need words at all, the gesture says _no shit_ loud and clear.

"When were you planning on telling me?"

Sam gives a different shrug. This one involves a tiny shake of his head. _Never_.

"How long?" Dean asks. "How long have you known you—how long have you wanted me?"

Sam waves his hands three or four times, as if he's trying to shoo a fly away. _Forever_.

"That's so stupid."

Sam looks up then, right at Dean, those big, hurt puppy eyes. It's a plea for Dean to drop it, and he can read the same shame he sees every time he looks in the mirror. Only now the shame is Sam's and Dean—Dean doesn't feel any shame, not about this. For the first time in a lifetime, Dean isn't ashamed. He wants Sam. More importantly, Sam wants him.

That's something to be proud of, being someone Sam wants. Someone Sam wants this much. Enough to let the world end. He shakes his head.

"No, don't be ashamed, Sammy. That's not what I was calling stupid. I mean, what I'm trying to say is, me too." He takes Sam's hand so his brother will look at him. "I don't even remember when or how it started. It's just always been there for me. Something I was so used to, and so used to not getting, that it was almost an afterthought."

Sam nods, like he gets exactly what Dean's saying. So Dean gives him a weak smile and continues. "It's worth dying for, for me, Sammy. Not even closing Hell—though that is. Just. To get you once. I can't think of a better—"

Sam pushes his hand away, his plate sliding across the table with it, and gets up, walking out just like that. Dean sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. He takes out his wallet and drops more money than their meal probably costs, not wanting to let Sam get too far while he's figuring out the math.

He chases his brother back to their hotel and finds Sam on the patio. They have a patio here, the half wall breaking and leading to a stone path right to the water. It's a pretty nice set up, though Dean still can't figure out why they're here, throwing away over a hundred dollars a night for a room when it turns out the person Sam needs to sacrifice is about as cheap as a date can get.

Sam is sitting on the wall now, his feet dangling over on one side, toes nearly brushing the sand. He's watching the waves lap up on the beach with a resigned air.

"This beach idea," Dean says. "Were you just trying to run me in circles? Throw me off indefinitely?"

Sam shakes his head, but his bottom lip is pouting out and Dean suspects that has at least a little bit to do with being figured out. This whole time Sam's been pissing him off trying to protect some mysterious girl—it was Dean he was trying to protect. Dean's been jealous of himself.

But how many people died that wouldn't have if Sam had just fucked him the day the oracle told him to?

"We have to do this, Sam. You know that."

Sam nods, not taking his eyes off the water. God, Dean wishes he knew what was up with the water.

"So…how do we…?" Dean laughs, ducking his head. "I mean, I know how the mechanics of getting fucked by tentacles work. But is there some kind of ritual? Do we have to have the altar?"

Sam shakes his head 'no,' then points to a bucket set up on the corner of the patio as a trash can. He holds up ten fingers, then four more, and then points to the bucket again.

Dean doesn't get it.

Sam gets up, picking up the bucket, and repeating the motion, pointing with great emphasis.

"We need fourteen buckets?" Dean asks, expecting a head shake but getting a nod. "What the hell do we need 14 buckets for?"

Sam points to the ocean.

"We need 14 buckets of salt water?"

Another nod.

"Okay, I'll bite. Why do we need 14 buckets of salt water?"

Sam stands there, stumped for a minute or so, then begins to mime his way through a sentence.

He moves his hand in the gesture he always has when he needs Dean to pass something over the table but his mouth is full and he won't talk like that.

"I want," Dean guesses.

Sam nods, then holds up two fingers, and then gives Dean the bird.

Dean laughs. "I want to fuck you?" he interprets, biting his bottom lip to try and hold in the embarrassing smile. He tries to step forward, take Sam in his arms and kiss him, _finally_ , but Sam breaks the embrace, pushing him back and holding an arm out so Dean knows he has more.

He then begins a series of movements that Dean eventually manages to translate into "But I won't do it until we have 14 buckets full of salt water."

Dean's brother is weird, but okay. Whatever he needs to do to get there.

He runs to the hotel's gift shop and finds nothing, though the guy at the counter tells him how to walk to the nearest drug store. It takes about 20 minutes, but finally Dean returns to find Sam, shirtless and all tentacled out, waiting eagerly for the arrival of his precious buckets.

He makes sure Dean has one in each of his hands, then picks up the other twelve in his two arms and ten extras. It's a comical sight.

"Not for nothing, Sammy, but how do you plan to go all the way to the water's edge without anyone seeing you and reporting the octo-man washing up on shore."

Sam doesn’t even bother to pretend he gives a fuck if someone sees him, just marches on out through the sliding glass door and down the stone path to the beach. What choice does Dean have but to follow?

They fill their buckets and leave them out on the patio, and then Dean hooks his fingers in the belt loop of Sam's jeans, right over his ass, pulling him back into their room. "C'mon, Sam. Promise is a promise. I got you your salt water."

Sam turns, wrapping his arms around Dean's neck and moving in tentatively. His lips are cautious when they meet Dean's, and Dean tries to pull him in harder, pull Sam down on top of him as he collapses onto the king bed, but Sam steps back.

He's still not letting the tentacles get on Dean, probably because he knows he won’t be able to stop himself once he does. He's still hesitating.

"Sammy, it's okay," Dean says, sitting up and pulling his shirt off over his head. "I want them to touch me. I like it."

Sam makes a face like a scared kid, stepping away from the bed. He looks torn, torn between wanting Dean and caring about him too much to risk this, and Dean hates that Sam is being forced to go through this, hates that he's the reason for the anguish Sam's been in since he learned the last trial.

But he loves it, too.

He sits up, crawling to the end of the bed and unbuckling Sam's jeans. "It's gonna be fine, Sam. I'm not gonna die. I'm gonna be fine. We both are. Just like you said when you did the first trial. You were right, okay? We can do this. You and me, together, we're gonna get out fine, and we're gonna live and I want that too. Now that I know you—I want it so bad."

Sam's eyes well up, and he tilts his head on one side. _How do you know?_ he seems to be asking.

Dean smiles, looking up at his brother. "If I live, you owe me a blowjob."

Sam makes a bitchy face, like Dean's not taking this seriously, but damn, Dean's the one who might die here and, more importantly, he's the one who would be leaving Sam alone again. He doesn't want to do that—he knows Sam can't handle it. Or, maybe Sam can. He did just fine last summer. But Dean doesn't want that for him. He wants to be selfish for once. He wants to keep Sam all to himself.

He's spent the last six years trying to convince his brother to let him die, and the irony is that now that Sam kind of has to, Dean's not standing for it. He holds up a pinky. "Promise me you will suck my cock like a dirty little whore if I don't die horribly after this."

Sam rolls his eyes, but he lets Dean wrap their pinkies together. Then Dean grins up at his brother, tugging Sam so that he has to crawl onto the bed or fall face first. "There," he says, kissing Sam, moving his mouth along Sam's sandpaper-rough jaw until he finds Sam's ear and licks the shell of it, making Sam shiver. "Now you know I'm safe. Cause I am not a guy who doesn't cash out on his BJs, Sammy."

Sam laughs, giving Dean a needy kiss. Dean breaks it and looks into his brother's eyes. "All joking aside, Sam," he says, taking one big hand in his own and placing it over his heart. "This isn't any different than the tooth. You remember what you told me? I think I can do this. You gotta trust me, too. We have to take this risk together."

Sam nods, a little hesitant, but he does nod. And then he finally plunges forward, kissing Dean with gusto. Before Dean even knows what's happening, he's being seized on by what feels like twenty hands and a thousand greedy mouths, all pulling his pants down or trying to press against his bare flesh.

It's less like being drugged this time, the overwhelming sensation coming from how many places he's being touched rather than one concentrated point of contact full of too much longing. Dean moans and is about to ask if they need lube, but then one of the tentacles begins to touch him and Dean gasps.

"Wow, wow, wow," he says, thrusting forward against nothing. "They self-lubricate. Oh my god, Sam, they self-lubricate."

Sam's answering smile is filthy, and suddenly Dean's pretty sure Sam hasn't only experimented with these things in his sleep.

"You dog," he says, kissing Sam.

The tip of the tentacle begins carefully, thin and dexterous, moving into Dean like fingers opening him up. It's not until he starts begging for more that it starts pushing in further. And further. Oh god, and further and further.

"How big do these things get?" Dean asks, but then the tentacle pulls out and pushes back in, like it's fucking him, and Dean shuts up, or, rather, Dean gets louder but his words cease to be words.

Sam's hands grab Dean's hips, one on each side, and he positions himself carefully above Dean, focusing completely on this as if he's not even paying the slightest attention to fucking Dean with this incredible almost-cock that moves deep, deep inside of him with a slow, sensuous sway. Even the suckers are doing their part, sucking at and teasing Dean's prostate.

"Sammy, what are you—?" He gasps, seizing forward, and Sam laughs, looking down at Dean wickedly.

Sam lines his dick up next to Dean's own, which seems pretty standard until another tentacle begins to wrap around them, creating a warm circle for them, all tight, slick skin with just enough space for them both to thrust in from their opposite sides. It's like fucking a girl, only it's one cunt made for both him and his brother, bridging them and the distance Dean never wanted between them in the first place. The flesh of his brother's dick is much hotter than the cool, sleek skin of the tentacle they're both swaddled in, and even the contrast of temperature is perfect.

Sam's made this tight little space for only them to fit in, and even if Dean dies today, the fact the he ever got to be alone with his brother in a place like that is enough.

"Fuck, Sam. Sam," Dean groans, rocking forward and back, not actually sure which of the two sensations—fucking or being fucked—is better. It's the best sex Dean's ever had on both ends of the spectrum, and his brain is not really okay to process that right now.

Above him, Sam meets his eyes, his big hand reaching up to cup one of Dean's cheeks and his mouth forming one word: Dean, Dean, Dean, over and over. Dean can't hear it, Sam is only lip syncing it, but he can see how desperate Sam is to say it.

"I know, Sammy," Dean says, his hands moving up and down Sam's chest, flicking at a nipple since all of Sam's extra limbs seem to be too busy breaking Dean's brain to focus on the details of Sam's pleasure. If this is going to be their one and only time together, Dean's gonna make damn sure that Sam likes it just as much as he does.

Sam whimpers, then bites his knuckle to keep the sound in. Dean pushes Sam’s hand aside, slipping his tongue in to keep Sam quiet instead. It works for a little bit, at least until the tentacle Dean's got up his ass begins to rub him right in the sweet spot, and Dean's head falls back as he moans.

He doesn't realize how much neck he's exposing until one of Sam's tentacles takes the bait, wrapping around his throat like a tight collar. He begins to lose air then, but it's nice, a lightheadedness that only adds to the rest of the overstimulation, and Dean realizes with a quiet chuckle that this is the tentacle Sam had cut off at the end to keep from touching him, split two ways and wrapping around him now in every direction.

"I'm gonna—I'm gonna," Dean says, gasping for breath as he feels himself lose control, shooting come into the tight tunnel where his and Sam's cocks are rubbing together. He feels Sam beginning to thrust more desperately, but at the same time, Sam makes a terrified noise.

Sam tries to pull back, like he's changing his mind and he needs to stop, but it's too late and they both know it. The tentacles are in control now, and they only respond to Sam's rebellion by pushing him down harder, one beginning to tie his and Sam's body together like a vine until Dean doesn't know where he ends and Sam begins. Sam's thrusts are nothing more than desperate humps now, an attempt to get release without the ability to move. The tentacle takes care of that for them, undulating around their cocks with enthusiasm until Dean thinks he might come all over again—there's no way Sam can hold back much longer.

If he's gonna die, he wants it to be now. As if some really twisted god heard that, Sam buries his face in Dean's neck right that moment, mouthing Dean's name against his skin one last time.

The venom Sam releases when he comes is every bit as awful as advertised. Dean blacks out almost immediately, his last thought being that with a sting like that, he's not expecting to ever see his brother again. Not on Earth, at least.

_______________________________________________________________

"Dean, Dean." He feels someone shaking him, but he can hardly pay attention to it, or to the urgency in his brother's voice. All he can think about is the voice itself. To Sam, talking, and, fuck, Dean missed that stupid voice of his. "Dean, we did it. You gotta wake up. You can't die now. We did it, we closed Hell. You have to live. Please, you can't die on me. Not now. Not again."

Dean laughs. It's been so long since he heard Sam talk that he'd forgotten just how much his little brother blabbers on.

He's sweating and freezing both at once, and he tries to sit up, but it doesn't quite work out that way. He's soaking wet, not just from the sweat, he thinks, but he doesn't know what else it could be, and he realizes after a few seconds that he's not lying on the bed like he thought. There's a gentle swaying implying movement, and every now and then it jostles his face back against something soft as cotton, but hard and firm under that. He's wrapped up tight, in some kind of hammock or—or—

"Sam," he says, taking a deep breath and recognizing the smell of the shirt his cheek has just bumped into. "Are you carrying me like a fucking baby in your tentacles?"

"Dean!" he hears, right above him, as close as if he was in Sam's arms, so he takes that as a yes. "Dean, you're alive. Oh god, hold on, okay?"

Dean nods. He doesn't have an option, really. He's caught so close in Sam's grasp that he can hardly move and, anyway, he doesn't feel so hot right now, if he's being honest.

"Sam," he says. "What happened?"

"Just hold on, Dean," Sam tells him. "Hold on, okay? I'm gonna get you all better."

Before Dean knows what's happening, there's a cup to his lips, and Sam's tipping it.

"It's salt water," he says. "Drink."

 _Why would I want to drink salt water?_ he tries to ask, but then he's gargling on it and he has to swallow or spit it back up, so he swallows. Bad, bad idea. As soon as it slides down his throat, it hits something that causes a terrible pain, and Dean turns away from Sam feeling a burning acid come up as he vomits and vomits, what feels like all of his insides. Luckily, Sam was apparently smart enough to take him outside before doing this, so it’s just sand he’s throwing up on.

He feels something stroke his cheek tenderly—a goddamn tentacle of all things—and can't laugh due to the distinct feeling that all of his innards are about to slide out of his mouth. "That's good, Dean," Sam tells him softly. "Get it all out."

"Why—?" Dean chokes out. "Did you do that?"

"The salt water neutralizes the venom," Sam tells him, encouraging him to drink more. "I figured out, that's why the hydra can live in the ocean and the water wasn't contaminated, just the beach and the rocks. The salt water counteracts it somehow. I've been dumping it on you all night, ever since you passed out, and your fever started to break as soon as the first splash came, so. I think that's why you're alive. I think getting it off you externally helped, but we need to flush it out of your insides, too, or it's going to kill you."

In the glorious absence of little brother blabbering on about science, Dean had forgotten what a nerd Sam was. Not that he’s not thrilled Sam figured it out, because, seriously, yay for not being dead. But…just…what a loser.

"This," Dean says, heaving again, "is not the sexiest morning after I've ever had."

Sam laughs, hands now instead of tentacles stroking through his hair. It's nice. Not that he's not a big fan of the tentacles, because he's never been fucked like that in his life, but the after effects being what they are, Dean really needs something solid and sensible to hold onto. Sam's big hands are as good an anchor as Dean is likely to get.

His voice is scratchy, but he manages to get a few words out. "You're sure it worked?"

"Yeah," Sam tells him. "There was a bright light after I said the words and…I just know. I can feel it."

"Does that mean I'm your dream girl?" Dean asks.

Sam laughs. "I maybe changed the word the oracle used so you wouldn't figure it out."

"What word did she use?"

Sam presses a kiss to the crown of Dean's head, and Dean hears him take a long breath, then feels the air through his hair as Sam exhales. "Soul mate."

Dean's throat tightens. He stays quiet. What is there to say to that?

"It's almost morning," Sam whispers, his voice sounding heavy with a meaning Dean doesn't understand until he keeps going. "I brought you out here, Dean, so you could see the sun rise when you woke up. I knew you'd wake up. I knew you'd have to be okay."

Dean recognizes that brand of frantic hope so fucking personally. He hates hearing it from Sam. "Yeah," he says, just to give Sam a little encouragement and not because he doesn't feel more pain than he has on the occasion of more than one of his deaths and, well, his life is weird because he can say that without a touch of exaggeration entering into the scenario. "I'm fine, Sam."

Sam lets out a low sound, oddly close to a sob, and when he bends down to kiss Dean's clammy forehead, Dean can feel a small, unconvinced smile beginning to form on his lips. "Look over there, Dean," Sam whispers. "See that? The sun's almost up now. I told you—I told you when this whole stupid trial thing started that I was gonna bring you to the light and make you see it. There it is."

He sounds so proud of himself, so damn hysterically desperate for what he's saying to be true, that Dean does what he asks, turning to look. He feels the sun on him now that Sam mentions it, a comforting warmth on his face as the pain begins to lessen. That's when his heart sinks. That's when he realizes…he's been awake for minutes now, his eyes are open. But he can't see a goddamn thing—it's all white and gray blurs and splotches from peripheral to peripheral. Maybe Sam did bring him to the light, but it doesn't matter much now.

"I can't see it," he says.

Sam laughs, then asks, "What do you mean? It's the sun, Dean, it's right there."

Dean swallows hard. "I can't see it, Sammy. I can't see anything."

"No," Sam replies. "No, please."

"It's okay," he says, reaching up to pass a hand over his eyes, as if that'll bring back his sight. Nope. Nada. Zilch. "It's okay, Sam. I'm alive. That's better than we thought."

"You're blind," Sam continues, as if Dean hasn't said anything. "I blinded you. Oh god, Dean, I—"

Dean reaches up, trying to find Sam's mouth. Finally he does, and he holds it shut between his fingers. "Hey, chill out, alright? I'm alive. You're alive. We closed the gates of Hell. No more demons ever, man. Think of that. So I can't see. Bummer. We got out good."

"You glow, too." Sam says it in a quick rush, like he's confessing to breaking Dean's cell phone or something. "You were glowing when we were still in the dark inside."

Dean just takes a few seconds to let that one sink in. He's blind, and he glows in the dark. "I don't even know if that's awesome or if it sucks."

To his surprise (and relief), Sam snorts. "You're very pretty when you glow, Dean. Like a fairy. I guess they finally get to claim you as one of their own. In more ways than one."

"You know what, fuck you," Dean says, but he can feel that he's smiling. "I'm glad I glow, you little bitch. I'm gonna keep your ass up all night for the rest of your life, and I won't be the least bit disturbed by it. I'll glow so bright you'll wish you were blind."

"Aww!" Sam says. "You even glow in the light when you're upset. You're like a mood ring."

"You've got to be kidding me," Dean mumbles.

He can _feel_ Sam smirking above him. "I guess you'll never know."

"Guess not," he replies, wondering if that's true. Maybe they can find a doctor, someone who can get his sight back. It'll be a party trying to explain how it went; he can see it now: a nice little old man with glasses, holding onto his clipboard for dear life as Dean casually explains the all night tentacle sex with his brother that led to his visual affliction. _"But it's okay,"_ he'll add as he wraps up. _"We did it to save the world from demons, so don't even worry about the whole incest thing. For the greater good and all that shit."_

He's laughing at the thought until Sam's tentacles hoist him up even higher, his lips meeting Sam's, and he realizes—that's it. He'll never see his little brother again. He's never seen the Grand Canyon, and he's not going to. He's not going to be able to _drive_.

His chest aches at all the loss, but when he reaches up, he knows the dimples on that smile, can picture it perfectly. That's something, at least. He's still got Sam, he's got Sam in a way he never let himself dream he would, and they're both okay. They made it out. There was a light at the end of the tunnel after all, even if it's only a metaphorical one. Sam's mouth on his—how Sam can stand to kiss him when he just threw up half his body weight, Dean will never know, but the kiss is there nonetheless. He wouldn't be kissing Sam right now if he'd done the trials and died completing them, the way he'd planned to before Sam threw a wrench in that plan. If anything is worth living for, that's the only light Dean ever really wanted to see.

"This isn't fair," he says.

"I know, Dean. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Sam sounds awful, like he's twelve seconds away from slapping himself around with his own tentacles. Which would be really fun to watch, and Dean would encourage it if he weren't blind, but apparently he is, so he shakes his head and finds a playful tone.

"I'm never gonna see you get old. I'm gonna get all gross and wrinkly, and you'll be some hot ass thirty-two year old until we kick it."

Sam's laugh sounds forced, but then he says, "You've never talked like that before."

"Like how?"

"Like we're going to get old. Like you're taking it for granted."

Dean sits quietly in the mass of squirming appendages for a few seconds, realizing that Sam's right. That Sam's onto something. "You know what?"

"Tell me," Sam replies, kissing him again and again.

"You're a freak with tentacles."

Sam pulls back from kissing. "Thanks, Dean. That point escaped me."

Dean continues, "I'm a freak who glows in the dark. And I can't see fuck all. I'm thinking our hunting days are probably behind us now that you're all wiggly and I can't ever go out in public after sunset."

Sam doesn't say anything. He's so deadly quiet that Dean wonders if he upset Sam somehow. He thought that was what Sam wanted. What they both wanted, even if Dean's never known how to admit it. They can quit now—what better out? Demons are finished, and aren't demons why they got into hunting in the first place? For once, they cleaned up their mess, they saved the world, and there were no equally dangerous consequences. Just Dean's eyesight, and as much as that sucks, it's almost nice, too. He can't fight against what he wants this time. He can't force Sam to stay in the life. They're done. He doesn't have a choice, which means he finally gets to make the one he's wanted to for years.

They've got a bunker to get back to, and it's not going to reveal the Men of Letters' secrets to today's generation of hunters without a little help. Sam and Dean can do that. Sit around in fluffy dead guy robes all day, reading up on ways to close out other people's hunts, but not having to watch each other die over and over chasing the jobs themselves. Or, Sam will read, and Dean will do other things. Cook, maybe, Sam liked that last time. The important thing is that they'll be together, in every way, and Dean's kind of really liking this idea more every second he spends thinking about it. "Let's go home, Sammy. Take my crippled ass home."

"Dean," Sam says, his voice a soft whisper. He sounds like he's about to cry, maybe, but in a good way. "You glow when you're happy, too."

**The End.**


End file.
